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The Putin-Nazi-Terrorist-O-Matic

I suppose it was always just a matter of time until the global capitalist ruling classes and their mouthpieces in the corporate media combined their two main official narratives into a Ronco-type 2-in-1 kind of deal. That’s right, folks, your days of switching between the War on Terror official narrative and the Putin-Nazi official narrative are over, because now, for just $19.99, the Putin-Nazi-Terrorist-O-Matic® takes care of all your official narrative needs with just the press of one button!

Here’s how it works. First, you take your classic mentally-disturbed individual, someone like, say, John Hinkley, Jr., Mark David Chapman, or Travis Bickle, or a total wack job like Cesar Sayoc, and you paint whichever clearly psychotic crimes he’s committed as acts of “terrorism.” Don’t worry about the definition of “terrorism” or how it has become a virtually meaningless label the capitalist ruling classes and corporate media can slap onto anyone. Just keep saying “terrorist,” “terrorism,” and any other lexical derivatives of “terror,” over and over, like some kind of mantra … you know, like the Hare Krishnas do.

Next, you take whatever obsession your disturbed individual is maniacally obsessed with, and you paint that obsession as an “ideology,” or some kind of organized political movement, as if your wack job was actually a rational person and not just a totally paranoid geek who decided to attempt to assassinate Reagan because he couldn’t get a date with Jodie Foster, or to murder John Lennon because God had instructed him to do so in a J. D. Salinger novel.

Now, this works much better if your disturbed individual is actually obsessed with something political, like, say, if he’s a Donald Trump fanatic who has plastered the windows of the van he’s living in with all sorts of blatantly psychotic artwork deifying Donald Trump and demonizing Donald Trump’s political opponents, but you’ll have to work with what your lunatic gives you. In any event, whatever his pathology, you will need to de-pathologize your psycho, so you can misrepresent him as a “domestic terrorist,” and then associate whatever “ideology” you’ve just painted onto him with “terrorism.”

If that sounds a little complicated, don’t worry, folks, it’s really not! The ruling classes and the corporate media just provided us with a demonstration of the Putin-Nazi-Terrorist-O-Matic in action, which proves how easy-to-use it is. In the span of just a single week, they whipped up so much mass paranoia that, by the weekend, millions of hysterical liberals were calling for a Deep State coup, and the arrest and internment of all registered Republicans, because a right-wing loon had sent a bunch of non-exploding bomblike devices to prominent members of the neoliberal “Resistance,” or rather, to their respective mail-screening services.

These Putin-Nazi Terrorist “bomb-like devices” were “intercepted” throughout last week. Their targets were a roll call of Resistance heroes, Soros, Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Brennan, the offices of CNN, Eric Holder, Maxine Waters, Joe Biden, and, yes, even Robert De Niro! Putin-Nazi panic paralyzed the nation! The neoliberal corporate media (who, remember, are serious, respected professionals, not conspiracist nuts like Alex Jones) began pouring out pieces informing the world that Donald Trump was behind these attacks, or had encouraged, “emboldened,” or “inspired” whoever was with his violent, neo-Hitlerian rhetoric.

By Thursday morning, #MAGAbomber, #MAGATerrorist, and other such hashtags were circulating widely on Twitter. Which meant it was only a matter of time until the Resistance linked these stochastically-terrorist MAGA bomber attacks to Russia. On Thursday evening, MSNBC’s Chuck Todd did exactly that, speculating that “this could be a Russian operation!” (Washington Post propagandist Craig Timberg, author of the infamous McCarthyite smear piece on “peddlers of Russian propaganda” that got the whole “fake news” hysteria going back in December 2016, would soon follow up with this ridiculous attempt to connect the “MAGA Terrorist” to Russia … but I’m getting a little ahead of myself.)

By Friday, after anti-Terrorism specialists (or the kids that work in the mail screening room) “intercepted” more “bomb-like devices” addressed to Senator Cory Booker and ex-National Intelligence Director James Clapper, the neoliberal punditocracy were soiling themselves on national television. This was it! The long-awaited Putin-Nazi Apocalypse had finally begun! And just as Paul Krugman had prophesied it would … or, OK, not exactly like that, but still, Trump was, once again, about to suspend the Constitution, declare martial law, and appoint himself dictator! Clearly, Putin had ordered Trump to launch the destruction of Western democracy by deploying the dreaded Totally Incompetent Domestic Terrorist Mail Bomber Strategy … and just in time for the midterm elections!

And then, just like that, they caught him … Cesar “the Jackal” Sayoc, Jr., the terrorist mastermind that had nearly perpetrated another 9-11-type event, and who was sleeping in his van behind an auto parts store! As is standard procedure for terrorist sleeper agents, Sayoc, until he was “activated,” had been maintaining a totally low-profile cover as juiced-up, body-building, racist male stripper with an extensive criminal record and an obsession with Trump. Like the “Skripal assassins” and other Putin-Nazi operatives, he had made a point of getting himself photographed and noticed by witnesses in various public places, and otherwise drawing attention to himself, which is one of the first things they teach you at the Kremlin. Sayoc hasn’t yet divulged the names and ranks of his handlers in the GRU, but, presumably, Eliot Higgins and Bellingcat are hard at work googling that right this minute.

In the meantime, the liberal corporate media have been working the Putin-Nazi-Terrorist-O-Matic on a more or less 24/7 basis. It is crucial at a time like this, when mass hysteria is reaching peak levels, that the public not be allowed to believe that this “MAGA Terrorist” is merely one more pathetic, attention-seeking geek who decided to vent his impotent rage on those he perceived as his mortal enemies. Same goes for the Pittsburgh synagogue attacker, who struck as I was writing this piece. Never mind that this homicidal idiot did not like Trump, who he condemned as a “Jew-lover.” In order to maintain the official narrative, the ruling classes need us to believe that he was not just another anti-Semite with a gun collection and a gab.com account, but, rather, an official “domestic terrorist,” who was probably “radicalized” by Donald Trump’s rhetoric!

Look, I’m no fan of Donald Trump, or racism, or anti-Semitism, or any other type of bigotry (despite what my smear-happy former editors at CounterPunch would like you to believe). What I am is a student of the production of ideology. I lived through the deployment of the official “War on Terror” narrative after 9-11, and then watched in frustration as millions of Americans mindlessly supported a war of aggression, the abrogation of many of their civil liberties, torture, and various other atrocities, based on nothing but propaganda and media-generated mass hysteria.

We are experiencing a similarly historic ideological readjustment at the moment, which I’ve been trying to capture (satirically and more seriously) since it began in the summer of 2016. The official “War on Terror” narrative (and people’s understanding of what “terrorism” is) is being gradually redefined and expanded to encompass any and all forms of “extremism” (i.e., whatever the ruling classes decide is “extremism”). Mass murder, battery, racist graffiti, opposing the spread of global capitalism, saying nasty things about Soros, tattooing your forehead with a giant Swastika, using the words “globalism,” “sovereignty,” and so on … the distinctions are rapidly disappearing. The media-generated mass hysteria over Islamic terrorism during the War on Terror is being replaced with media-generated mass hysteria over Nazis and Russians (unless you’re a die-hard Trump supporter, in which case, you’ve got your immigration hysteria, but my focus is on ruling class ideology, which, despite the existence of Donald Trump, remains neoliberal, supranational, and, yes, God help me, globalist in nature). Any and all forms of opposition to global capitalist ideology, regardless of whether they come from the Left or the Right, are being stigmatized as “extremism,” and thus inextricably linked to “terrorism.” I described this, back in January, as a global capitalist “War on Dissent,” and I think events over the last ten months have largely confirmed my diagnosis.

I’d love to go on, but this essay is already way too long for people’s phones, and the midterm elections are fast approaching, so this is no time for critical thinking … and plus, news is just coming in from Guardian columnist Christina Patterson that Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party are also responsible for the Pittsburgh attack, and for “emboldening” all these “extremists” and “terrorists,” and for “normalizing” anti-Semitism and fascism, and mass murder, and who knows what other atrocities, and I don’t want to miss a chance to catch the Putin-Nazi-Terrorist-O-Matic in action!

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CJ Hopkins
October 29, 2018
Photo: Cesar Sayoc, Jr.

DISCLAIMER: The preceding essay is entirely the work of our in-house satirist and self-appointed political pundit, CJ Hopkins, and does not reflect the views and opinions of the Consent Factory, Inc., its staff, or any of its agents, subsidiaries, or assigns. If, for whatever inexplicable reason, you appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to support it, please go to his Patreon page (where you can contribute as little $1 per month), or send your contribution to his PayPal account, so that maybe he’ll stop coming around our offices trying to hit our staff up for money. Alternatively, you could purchase his satirical dystopian novel, Zone 23, which we understand is pretty gosh darn funny, or any of his subversive stage plays, which won some awards in Great Britain and Australia. If you do not appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to write him an abusive email, please feel free to contact him directly.

Although, as you so rightly pointed out recently, the appropriate response by any patriotic American is to do absolutely nothing. Especially not voting.

If nobody voted – except for the one-third or so of Americans who are on the government payroll, of course – perhaps they would understand that all is not well with the citizenry.

On second thoughts, the time saved by not voting (or bothering to read or listen to all the crap telling you whom to vote for) could well be used for a little pitchfork-sharpening and collection of flammable materials.

What is wrong with these people? They’ve been screaming Hitler, Hitler, literally Hitler! for two years now and still the maniac Donald J. Hitler is free to goosestep his way around the Oval Office. My office isn’t oval (or square or rectangular) because I don’t actually have one, but if I did, and a HITLER was in it, I sure as hell wouldn’t just let him stay in there! I’d borrow a gun and shoot the bastard or give him a cyanide pill, tell him he lost the war, close the door gently behind me and wait for history to repeat itself.

But these “resistance” types act all shocked and panicked when some poor schmuck Hitler fanboy sends non-exploding “bombs” to their sponsors and supporters . Why? Hitler 1.0 is known for killing, what, something like 20 million people with poison gas, bullets, BOMBS, you name it, so why the surprise when an inept loser tries to impress Hitler 2.0 by mailing “bombs” to his enemies? Next time that loser might be smarter and mail real bombs or build himself a tank army to take out these selfless anti-Hitler resistance heroes.

The real kicker: despite the “bombs” and all the hysteria, Literally Hitler is still free in his Oval Office to conspire with his cronies and plot the destruction of the free world.

Well, I for one, am getting suspicious. This so-called resistance is all talk and no action, smoke and no fire, ya know what I’m saying? It’s almost like they are making stuff up and LYING to us. Okay, we got Hitler 2.0 at the helm of the free world (or so they say) so knowing what Hitlers do…why don’t they take him out?

It makes no sense to yap for 24 months straight about the evil he’s planning and then do absolutely NOTHING to stop him. They are either liars, in cahoots with him or dangerously stupid. They cannot be trusted.

That you continue to be able to effectively satirize an ever evolving “reality” that could best be described as essentially “post-reality” is quite an accomplishment CJ. Thank you. When “bat-shit crazy” becomes the “new normal” in the world of Western MSM one knows that there can be nothing good on the horizon for humanity.

When one steps back to the big picture and realizes that there is absolutely no valid reason whatsoever for the continued collective Western led military madness and war mongering to continue, and that we could live in a peaceful world in which we actually addressed real world issues like climate change and pollution, it is difficult not to think that the true “extremists” in the world are actually the leaders of this Western militarized neoliberal monstrosity bringing the world to the brink of destruction.

Does anybody really believe that this Useful Idiot is anything more than a patsy?

Were the authors of the Official Narrative just sitting around, hoping against hope that some random, previously-unknown Domestic Terrorist would spontaneously leap into action at the critical moment, so as to illustrate the next chapter of the Putin-Nazi Terrorist Apocalypse?

The people with the greatest confidence in miraculously fortuitous coincidences, are almost certainly those who are in a position to orchestrate them.

The house always wins in the long run, and usually even in the short run. It’s almost like somebody planned it that way.

the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event — like a new Pearl Harbor.

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